A half a mile ahead of them, Dick was floorboarding his truck down a country road towards Seldom. He gave his passenger a stony glare. “Iona’s a helluva gal,” he said.
“I agree.”
“A fella’d be a damn fool not to fall in love with her if she took a shine to him.”
“How is it that Owen puts it? We are on the same page?”
“Well then,” Dick said, and just stared ahead for a minute.
“What is happening at a shower?” Pierre finally asked.
Dick read his overly interested face and said, “I’ll just let you live with your fantasy.”
Natalie was in Mrs. Christiansen’s rooming house, sitting on her bed in a pink silk georgette slipdress with shirring detail. She stared in perplexity at the many gifts she’d been given: hair products, a box of truffles, a stack of Tupperware bowls, six steak knives, a wine decanter in the shape of a mallard, a pink quilted scrapbook, The Joy of Cooking, and three strands of Onetta’s hard-to-find barbed wire pounded onto a board. Were she in France, she thought, she’d have guessed she was getting married.
Iona was in her own room, turning in front of the dresser mirror to see the fit on her stonewashed jeans and wondering if a sequined black plunge-front bra would seem too wanton even to a European. She changed into a white silk camisole while humming Rodgers and Hart’s “Isn’t It Romantic?” The house was quiet, except for some discreet sounds from downstairs as Mrs. Christiansen stacked things in the dishwasher. Iona heard a car door slam and hurried to the window. She parted the curtain.
At Owen’s gas station, Dick swerved his truck into a gas lane and Pierre got out. The hullabaloo inside Owen’s bungalow was still as loud as a Manchester United football game, and Pierre was heading toward the hue and cry when he saw the Ram’s engine was still running. He asked, “Are you not rejoining the party?”
“I’m a little tired,” Dick said.
Pierre smiled as he saw his way to Iona simplified. He looked at his Piaget watch but wasn’t sure if he’d set it right. “What hour have you now?”
“After midnight.”
“Well, goodbye then,” Pierre hurriedly said, shook the cattleman’s hand in a French farewell, and slammed the Ram’s door. Watching Dick head north toward his ranch, away from Natalie, Pierre raked back his lion’s mane of hair, straightened his black bow tie, and then walked kitty-corner to Mrs. Christiansen’s house.
Natalie strolled by Mrs. Christiansen’s tomato plants, one hand lightly flitting over the leaves, the night of the yard soft as silk to her skin. Cicadas were shrill in the trees. She inhaled the hay-scented air like nourishment. Envied the silence that only she disturbed. Worked out in her mind the question, Who do you love?
28
When no one, he was sure, was watching, Pierre Smith hustled from behind a shade tree to the side of Mrs. Christiansen’s grand, three-story rooming house and looked at the upstairs windows. All were still lighted. In one he thought he saw a wide shape pirouetting while she toyed with her hair. Ursula’s room. And then he thought he heard the kitchen’s screen door creak shut as if a wandering roomer had entered the building from the vegetable garden. He went to the trellis he’d destroyed Thursday night and found Carlo Bacon hadn’t yet repaired it. He sidestepped along the house, looking up, until he found a gutter downspout. He shinnied up.
Meanwhile, Dick Tupper ended his dupery and headed back into Seldom, turning off the ignition for the final half block and letting his truck silently glide, its tires popping gravel, until it halted in Mrs. Christiansen’s alley. He checked his handsome face in the mirror, smoothed his mustache, and shut the driver’s side door so quietly it was softer than the crunch of celery at a ladies’ tea. And then he crept up to the kitchen porch steps, just missing Natalie as she ascended the servants’ staircase to her room. He peeked through the fly-specked screen door and saw Mrs. Christiansen humming as she put away wine glasses in a cupboard. She and Dick both heard a wrenching metal noise as a faraway downspout gave way. They heard a whump as Pierre hit the ground, flat on his back.
Mrs. Christiansen said to herself, “My goodness, what was that?” She scuttled out to the front porch.
While she was away, Dick sneaked in through the screened kitchen door and found the servants’ staircase. He took off his faux crocodile cowboy boots and walked up with them joined in one hand.
Outside, on the front porch, Mrs. Christiansen was looking down at the downspout that had so mysteriously crashed. She couldn’t see Pierre hiding under her juniper bushes. She said to herself, “This house is falling apart.”
Pierre was trying to get deeper into the junipers when he found an open basement window. What luck! Squeezing headfirst through the window, he fell into stacked cans of housepaint that thunked and rang on the basement floor. Had Mrs. Christiansen been near, she’d have heard him mutter “Mmpff.” But she was inside the house.
Natalie Clairvaux was prettily sitting on her bed, facing herself and her conscience in the pier glass mirror. She silently rehearsed what she was going to say. She revised it. She supplied histrionic gestures. She changed her mind. She posed differently.
Dick was sneaking from door to door in the upstairs hallway, holding his boots in one hand. All the numbers were gone. He stopped before one maple door and touched his fingertips to the glue spot. He peered closer, as if he could read a faint trace of the numeral. Was it number four? Cautiously opening the door, he drooped in despair. “Closet,” he said.
Another maple door opened behind him. Owen’s Aunt Opal walked out of her room, binding her terrycloth robe around her, and Dick hid inside the closet. She shut her door just as he did, and then she went downstairs by the front staircase.
Still waiting impatiently, Iona and Natalie both opened their doors to peek out. Seeing only each other, they quickly ducked back inside, slamming their doors closed.
Crawling up the wooden basement stairs on his hands and knees, Pierre hit the kitchen door with his head, inching it ajar. A stripe of Mrs. Christiansen appeared as she got a flashlight from under the kitchen sink.
Opal called, “Marvyl?”
Mrs. Christiansen looked up and called, “Opal?” She headed to the dining room. When she got far enough away, Pierre widened the doorway and prepared to crawl into the kitchen.
But Opal swooped in. She called to Marvyl, “Did you hear that crash outside?”
In the dining room, Mrs. Christiansen said, “Well, it’s The Revels after all.”
Opal saw the ajar basement door and slammed it shut with a swift kick of her foot. She went to the dining room.
Pierre was sitting back on his haunches, holding his nose with both hands.
Still holding his boots, Dick eased out of the closet and edged down the hallway, wagging a finger at each maple door as he counted them. At what he thought may have been number four, he stopped and pushed it open. “Bathroom,” Dick said.
Another door opened down the hall. Dick ducked into the bathroom. Both doors slammed.
In the kitchen, Pierre was crawling on both knees and one hand, the other hand still holding his hurt nose. He reached what he believed to be the door to the servants’ staircase, but it was a full pantry closet. Eye level with the canned goods, he saw garbanzo beans, Jell-O packages, baby gherkins, and a jar of Dijon mustard behind a can of jellied beets.
With disgust, he said to himself, “La cuisine américaine.” With national pride he pulled the jar of Dijon mustard forward, obscuring the jellied beets, and closed the pantry door.
Mrs. Christiansen was approaching the pantry and saying, “Opal? I hear your voice, but I can’t find you.”
Scurrying sideways, Pierre opened another door and happened upon the staircase. Going up on his hands and knees, he turned around to shut the door behind him just as Mrs. Christiansen walked in, slamming that door shut with a bang. Pierre softly whimpered.
“Marvyl?” Opal called.
And Mrs. Christiansen called back, “Opal? Aren’t we
a pair at one in the morning?” She walked to Opal’s voice.
Still in the bathroom, Dick tilted his head out.
Concentrating on the hallway floor as if the ship was keeling, old Nell was shuffling toward him.
Dick ducked violently back into the bathroom, considered hiding behind a sunflower shower curtain, worried momentarily that he’d been watching too many sitcoms, and instead flattened against the wall, holding his boots against his chest. The bathroom door opened and, for the instant, hid him. Old Nell entered and shut the door. Completely exposed, Dick couldn’t believe the old crone didn’t see him. She opened the medicine cabinet, got out her toothpaste, and squeezed a glob of it onto a toothbrush. She said, “Remember to spit this time.”
In the hallway, Natalie was tiptoeing down the hall to Iona’s room. She leaned her cheek close to the door, listening for a male voice. Suddenly the door flew open, and a surprised Iona was only inches away.
Natalie was stumped for something to say, then twisted a hank of brown hair in a knot. She turned sideways. “Would you like my hair in a chignon?”
Iona just stared for some seconds. And then she said, “It’s darling.”
“Well, goodnight.”
A frustrated Iona slammed the door.
Natalie walked back to her room, passing the staircase to the kitchen just as Pierre, on his hands and knees, shoved the door. She did not see him, but deliberately bumped the kitchen staircase door shut with her hip. Another faint complaint from Pierre could be heard.
Old Nell exited the bathroom, and heard the latch click as she softly shut the bathroom door. She chanced to see Natalie as she slammed a hallway door behind her. Old Nell shrugged at Seldom’s new-fangled ways and slammed the bathroom door.
The kitchen staircase door opened and Pierre peeked out, a hand softly testing his abused nose, just as Dick peeked out from the bathroom. Seeing each other, they withdrew for a second, then peeked out again.
Then Iona and Natalie looked out with them. Simultaneously all four doors slammed shut.
Iona heard Mrs. Christiansen call from the kitchen, “Iona? What are you doing up there?”
Iona shouted back. “Nothing, Grandma!”
“But what’s all that noise?”
Iona shouted, “I’m doing nothing real loud!”
Natalie primly sat on her bed. She crossed her legs. She uncrossed them. She rolled to one thigh and fashionably posed. She reclined luxuriantly, seductively, like an odalisque, but she thought better of it. She stared with wide-eyed expectation at the door.
Pierre crawled forward on his hands and knees, then remembered his Gallic dignity and stood.
Dick waited with his back against the bathroom door. He bent down and worked his stockinged feet into his boots. Confidently opening the bathroom door, he walked out into the hallway and headed toward Pierre like a businessman on an interoffice errand, nodding professionally as they passed. “Evenin’,” Dick said.
And Pierre said, “You bet.”
Each watched the other as Dick knocked “Shave-and-a-haircut” on Natalie’s door and Pierre rapped “Six-bits” on Iona’s. Softly, the bedroom doors opened.
Mrs. Christiansen called from the first floor, “Iona?” just as Opal called, “Natalie?”
Iona and Natalie each frantically yanked their gentlemen callers inside before hushing them with hands to their mouths and heading out to the hallway to see what Mrs. Christiansen and Opal wanted.
Pierre and Dick loitered in the two empty bedrooms, uncertain what to do with themselves. Pierre paged through Iona’s Cosmopolitan magazine, idly hunting nudity; Dick noodled around Natalie’s dresser, lifting hair products and perfumes to read their labels, then putting them back down. Each heard a light rap on the door and hurried to open it.
Pierre faced Carlo Bacon.
Dick faced Owen Nelson.
Pierre and Dick hesitated for a second, then slammed their doors.
Reprimanded for noisiness, Iona and Natalie wordlessly stomped up the kitchen staircase. Each paused to stare at the other in the now-empty hallway, then opened the door to her own bedroom.
Iona was confronted by Carlo. He immediately jittered, hit his thigh to halt it, and then he lurched toward her, holding his arms wide. “Oh, you poor thing,” he said. “Who needs a hug?”
“Stay!” Iona said.
Owen was scarfing down truffles in Natalie’s room. She took hold of his ear.
Wide-shouldered Onetta was policing the hallway with a Louisville Slugger when Carlo and Owen were heaved out. Doors slammed. Onetta sneered as she patted the baseball bat in her palm.
“We come in peace,” Owen said.
Onetta threatened, “And you’ll go in pieces.”
Owen’s hand went to his wallet pocket and hauled out a Falstaff. He held it to her. She softened.
Inside the bedrooms Pierre faced Iona and Natalie faced Dick. Iona said to Pierre, “About Saturday. Did you know there’s a wedding?”
And Natalie asked Dick, “Whose?”
Iona told Pierre, “Dick and Natalie.”
And Dick told Natalie, “You and Pierre.”
Natalie and Pierre simultaneously replied, “Comment?” (Say again?)
Dick told Natalie, “You’re getting married.”
Each said with astonishment, “Married!”
Onetta, Carlo, and Owen were sitting on the hallway carpet, sharing the Falstaff, hearing havoc in both French and English behind them. Onetta got up. “You guys want another?”
They allowed as to how that just might hit the spot, and Onetta went downstairs.
Carlo asked, “You see Natalie in there?”
Owen said, “Oh, yeah.”
“What was she wearing?”
“Silk georgette slipdress with shirring detail.”
Pandemonium was growing huge in the rooms.
Carlo asked, “She have a pretty shape?”
“Oh, yeah. And Iona?”
“Wore this flimsy little thing. Silk charmeuse camisole over low rise, bootcut jeans.”
“Sure wish I woulda been there.”
The skinny cook closed his eyes in contemplation. “I do enjoy seeing a pretty shape.”
Closing his eyes as well, Owen said, “Precious memories. How they linger.”
And then Owen and Carlo opened their eyes. Stern Mrs. Christiansen and Owen’s Aunt Opal were in the hallway in front of them, arms folded, seething.
“Or, you can lose ’em in an instant,” Owen said.
29
On Main Street outside Mrs. Christiansen’s, twenty townspeople were in robes and pajamas, gazing up at the fully lighted house. They heard hollering and protests in French and English. A child asked, “Is this a dream?” One guy was eating popcorn from a paper sack and sharing it all around. Mrs. Slaughterbeck poured hot kettle water into tea cups and a little girl carried them to others. She collected money to help repair her father’s Buick.
Bert Slaughterbeck asked Orville, “You don’t s’pose it’s poltergeists, do ya?”
Orville stated, “It’s the hobgoblin company of love.”
The townspeople paused to stare at him.
Inside the house, Iona’s bedroom door flew open and Opal hauled in Owen by his ear. Mrs. Christiansen grandly entered, and Dick escorted Natalie, a hand gently riding her shirred lower back. When Carlo slunk in, he held his shirt collar high to hide his face, like a criminal avoiding cameras on his way to jail. And then, for no good reason, Onetta and old Nell walked in. Pierre watched the parade with mystification and was about to shut the door to insure that no one else would crowd in when the Reverend Picarazzi crowded in, wearing a purple stole over his party clothes and toting his Extreme Unction kit.
Silence.
Looking around, he took off his stole and muttered, “I must’ve been misinformed.”
Pierre glanced at his Piaget watch and saw it was three in the morning. He stood on his tiptoes to see over everyone’s head, and waved to his fiancé
e, who was wedged between Carlo and Owen. Because of the hubbub he had to yell. “I have only one thing to say to you!”
She yelled back, “What?”
“Nine hours!”
Onetta surprised the crowd by shooting a starter’s pistol out the screenless window and shouting, “Quiet!” Shredding gunsmoke straggled out on a gentle August breeze.
Mrs. Christiansen nodded thanks to Onetta and became teacherly. “Hands out of pockets,” she instructed, and Carlo and Pierre complied. “Nell, is that gum?”
Old Nell spit her Wrigley’s into a tin wastepaper basket. It clanged.
Mrs. Christiansen delivered her first chastisement by turning to the cattleman. “And you, Dick Tupper! I’m surprised at you!”
“You know, Mrs. Christiansen, I’m sorta surprised at myself.”
“Men! On the second floor!”
All the males hung their heads in shame.
Iona said, “We’re sorry, Grandma.”
Dante Picarazzi said, “When you think about it, it’s not so bad, really.”
“Syncretism!” Owen’s Aunt Opal exclaimed.
Who knows where she got the word?
There was another knock on the door. Pierre, finding this beyond belief, struggled his way between bodies to open it. The grinning trucker from Sidney was standing in the hallway, hefting a pony beer keg on his broad shoulder, in his free hand stacked plastic cups.
Ursula walked up behind him, her orange hair newly spiked, wiping sleep from her eyes. She asked, “Did someone hear a door slam?”
Critical mass was reached when the trucker from Sidney invited Ursula to join him in Iona’s bedroom and the thirteen tried to sort themselves out. Owen directed traffic with a bullhorn rolled from Iona’s Cosmopolitan magazine. “Plenty of room here, plenty of room. Men, stay against the walls! Women on the bed!”
Carlo petted his Dick Tracy mustache as he snickered and said, “Hubba hubba.”
Natalie, Iona, Mrs. Christiansen, Opal, Onetta, Nell, and Ursula obeyed Owen’s instructions. Mrs. Christiansen got to a tottering stand on the mattress as she shouted, “There seems to be some contention over who is marrying Mademoiselle Clairvaux.”